Ash
by Revanche
Summary: The onset of winter.


Title: Ash   
Author: Revanche   
Disclaimer: Navy NCIS is owned by CBS, or at least TPTB.  
Category: Angst, I guess. Romance is subjective.  
Feedback: As always, is much appreciated.  
Spoilers: Nope.  
Notes: Response to a challenge ("write G/D slash."). Bet it's the last time anybody asks me to do that. 

The onset of winter.

* * *

There is a strange, arctic bitterness in the air today. If he didn't know better, he might say that it is dread or sorrow, time passing or someone walking over his grave. 

Instead, he reaches for a thicker jacket and blames bad weather.

xxxxx

The park is nearly empty. The chill has driven away its usual occupants, kept them inside, safe and warm behind walls of glass or huddled in the doorways lining the streets. The only ones here look cold and tired, dressed in black like funeral mourners. They keep their hands in their pockets as they walk quickly along the sidewalks, leaves crunching underfoot. Frost glitters on the grass, on the trunks of trees, each bead crystalline and sharper than thorns. December hangs heavy in the air; dark nights lie ahead. He steals a look at the dashboard clock. Six-thirty in the morning and he's here, breathing coffee and perfume and unease. But they have a job to do, and that is what matters. Introspection has no place here and he forces himself to smile, to maintain distance in the guise of looking for their suspect.

"You really think he's gonna show?" he asks, scanning the bleak flatness around them, the grey asphalt dark and wet, paralleling the dying grass like a premonition.

"Be here 'til he does," Gibbs says absently, sounding curiously distracted, or maybe tired. It's too early in the morning for it to be this cold. The car's heaters aren't helping at all, but they can't turn them up in case this suspect turns out to be one of the few intelligent -- or paranoid -- ones.

Kate breathes on her window, condensation forming like ripples in a pond, and Tony turns away before she clears it away, missing childish graffiti, fingerprints smeared in patterns recognizable only to the artist, only in dreams. Unslept hours shadow his eyes and he sighs.

Thirty-two years and he has never felt this old.

"Something wrong, Dinozzo?" Gibbs asks, and Tony carefully does not straighten, maintains his slouching pose against back of the seat, cheap upholstery pressing against his neck.

"Just trying to get comfortable," he says. He stretches an arm out along the empty seat next to him and feels the remaining warmth begin to fade away. He considers the possibility of being the first agent to be felled by hypothermia in the middle of D.C.'s commercial district and decides that it is an honor he can live without. He crosses his arms over his chest and wonders how long it will take for his skin to grow paper-thin, for winter to slide in unfettered and consume him whole.

He raises his eyes and meets Gibbs', sees something almost like understanding, and this chill runs more than bone-deep.

By the time he is able to speak, the chance is gone.

xxxxx

Private First Class Allen Dutcher lies with his face to the ground, hands cuffed behind his back, and a few feet away, Tony tastes blood at the back of his throat, the chill and exertion rendering the act of breathing both difficult and cruelly painful. Kate steps away from the suspect, straightening, and reaches for her cell phone to share the good news. Dutcher turns his head and looks up at Gibbs as if to plead, to protest, and when Tony sees the answering expression on Gibbs' face, bitter air sears his lungs. Dutcher looks away, his eyes wide with fear, and Tony gives up the pretense, dropping to a crouch.

"They're on their way," Kate says, snapping her cell phone shut and dropping it back into her pocket. Tony does not reply. The scene will have to be processed; the contents of Dutcher's bag, dropped throughout the park, tracing the jagged route from the car to this clearing, will have to be found, analyzed, classified and filed. There is still work to be done, but their part, at least for now, is finished. He is soaked through and the wind is sharp, and when he stands, he moves carefully, as though he's afraid of breaking bones. As though he is fragile enough for this to be a danger.

He stands, trying not to shiver, and wonders how it can be so cold in mid-afternoon. It's not fair, really, and the surrounding trees should be doing more to reduce the windchill. He looks down at his hands and it is as if diamonds have melted across his palm, stinging like blood. He regards them for a moment, transfixed, and then looks away, feeling foolish. He looks away, up at a brilliant windswept sky, and thinks that there is nothing so cold as that color, so close to the blank horizon grey that haunts him day and night.

"Get back in the car before you freeze to death," Gibbs says. There is no compassion in his voice and Tony follows the order. He does not draw his jacket tighter around himself as he leaves the clearing, unable to give in to that temptation, to demonstrate that weakness now, when Gibbs is looking for it.

He glances back only once. Gibbs is not watching him leave. His trenchcoat is the color of dead autumn leaves, impervious to the cold.

Invulnerable.

Kate catches his eye and he quickens his pace.

xxxxx

He stands in front of the mirror and stares at his reflection. Water runs room-temperature and forgotten over his hands.

He cannot help feeling that this is the Abyss they always warned him about.

xxxxx

They've turned the thermostat up; the office is hot and muggy and there is a constant roar in the background, just a little too loud to be white noise. Keys clatter, a phone rings. Keiko makes plans for the weekend; she's going out of town with her husband. Tony leans back in the chair and tries not to think about the scritching of trees against windowpanes, the distorted triangle of light falling across the floor, snow melting between his fingers as he sculpted and took aim. He finishes his report eventually and stands to retrieve it from the printer; lately, Gibbs has taken to refusing to read his e-mail. He says it's because technology has surpassed its usefulness (actually, he says it's a damned waste of time), but Tony has seen the way his face grows pained when he looks at the screen.

The pages rustle as he carries them across the room, slides them on to Gibbs' desk. Kate's computer chimes; she gathers her purse as the display goes dark. McGee, ever the boy genius, is long gone, dismissed after his perfunctory duties were completed. It's drizzling, an unsteady battering that flickers at the corners of his vision like static. Gibbs reaches for the report; their fingers touch like singeing. There has been something in Gibbs' expression all day, almost like empathy, burning useless and unwanted.

Tony leaves the office without saying goodbye and manages to forget, just when it matters, that the air outside is cold. His sleeves are still rolled up and he shudders at the sudden chill as he hurries across the expanse of concrete to his car, where he fumbles with the heater and does not find what he's looking for. The radio plays on, carpet sales and auto insurance and songs that all sound the same. The DJ warns of bad weather and pileups and it strikes Tony as not entirely fair that this sort of thing can kill. It seems an implausible means of death, not nearly as likely as a bullet, a fall, the ever-popular blunt object to the base of the skull.

He passes a Taurus on the side of the road, crumpled and dying, awash in uniform blue and red and the headlights of oncoming traffic. He does not stop to look. This is what happens. Mundane and daily tragedy becomes foreign, no longer interesting.

He wonders if this is a sign of maturity.

xxxxx

He closes the blinds as soon as he returns home. Lovers kiss in the hazy glow of streetlights, but tonight is too forbidding. He looks at the irrelevance on the television screen and listens to the silence in his head. It is better than dreaming, because he is thirty-two years old and the only lasting relationship he has is with someone who has no real need for him. Lately, his dreams have been tangled with reality, inseparable, and tinged with that same sadness, that same chill. He cannot achieve balance, regain equilibrium, and he cannot remember the sun in spring.

There is a knock at his door. He does not need to answer it. The key turns in the lock; the last of the fading light spills inside. The television darkens and he comes to his feet in time to be pushed back down. He closes his eyes against unclouded skies and the blue of distant horizons, and just for a second, he remembers what it is to be warm.

He pretends that this is not weakness.

xxxxx

End


End file.
